Product

What's next for Social Media?

After many years of flying high, public sentiment around social media in general, and specifically around certain platforms has turned sour. A 2020 Pew Research Survey found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that social media has a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in this country. In a recent article on the Columbia Journalism Review, Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen wrote “When Elon Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter last year, journalists around the world looked on in alarm,” and those fears earned credence weeks later when Musk banned journalists who criticized him from Twitter.

At the same time, social media has become a critical tool for audience engagement, story lead generation, and simply drawing attention to stories as they are published. If the old ways are no longer working, what will come next?

In the wake of Musk’s Twitter takeover, the federated microblogging service Mastodon drew a lot of attention and millions of new account users. Federated models (aka “the fediverse”) offer the promise of a social media landscape where news organizations can be in control of their circumstances, and less subject to the power of large platforms. But, months later, some observers are criticizing Mastodon for being too complicated or otherwise not ready to fill the role Twitter held.

For this Knight Lab Studio project, the team will explore the many changes happening in the social media landscape and interpret them in light of the needs and practices of news producers. They’ll explore what is available now and what is coming next, and perhaps cook up a few ideas of their own.

Faculty and Staff Leads

Joe Germuska

Chief Nerd

Joe runs Knight Lab’s technology, professional staff and student fellows. Before joining us, Joe was on the Chicago Tribune News Apps team. He is the founder of CensusReporter.org, and a proud board member of City Bureau.

Project Details

2023 Spring
Into the Fediverse?

Description

After many years of flying high, public sentiment around social media in general, and specifically around certain platforms has turned sour. A 2020 Pew Research Survey found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that social media has a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in this country. In a recent article on the Columbia Journalism Review, Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen wrote “When Elon Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter last year, journalists around the world looked on in alarm,” and those fears earned credence weeks later when Musk banned journalists who criticized him from Twitter.

Important Questions
  • What are the truly most useful features of social media for journalism?
  • What are the risks and challenges of social media for journalism? Are there, or could there be, platforms which mitigate these risks?
  • How should journalists engage with the Mastodon platform?
  • Which other “fediverse” projects might be useful to news producers?
Sample Milestones
  • Week 1-2: Begin research and background reading. Create accounts and explore various social media systems.
  • Week 3-4: Interview journalists and media experts to further understand the current and future state of social media for journalism. Continue exploring emerging platforms and standards and generate ideas for new opportunities
  • Weeks 5-8: Outline best practices guide and begin organizing and creating content.
  • Weeks 9-10: Finalize best practices guide.
Outcome

At a minimum, this project team will produce a web-based guide curating best practices and important resources for journalists who are also asking these questions. If our exploration leads in the right direction, we may also include scenarios for possible futures or concept sketches for new tools or platforms. We may even prototype some code.

Links
Students

Emmie Fister

Alex Harrison

Jessica Li

Atharva Weling

2023 Fall
Fediverse or Pluriverse?

Description

The social media landscape has continued to shift and evolve since we started exploring the space. A number of new platforms are taking shape, and some are even showing staying power. While some observers are trying to identify "the next Twitter," others see a future where no one system is dominant. Instead, much as in the rest of our lives, perhaps people will participate in multiple different networks and communities. What will it take to put more power in the hands of individuals and small groups to make their own choices, instead of tolerating what a few big platforms choose to support?

Important Questions
  • What are alternative models to singular "big room" social networks?
  • For these alternative models, what features are necessary for people to find them attractive? Can emerging platforms and protocols be used to deliver these features?
  • Are there opportunities social networks that are more than just "posts"? Think about group decision making; maintenance of documents and archives; what else?
  • For "big rooms," is there a model which supports their desireable features while protecting everyday users from the whims of owners and administrators? from trolls and bullies?
  • What are some long-understood factors of group dynamics in networks? How might we design systems that embed those lessons so that we don't keep making the same mistakes?
Sample Milestones
  • Week 1-3: Begin research and background reading. Create accounts and explore various social media systems. Develop first set of desired features and antipatterns-to-avoid.
  • Week 4-5: Generate ideas and scenarios for alternative approaches to social media. Test them out in thought exercises and lo-fi prototypes.
  • Weeks 5-8: Iterate on concepts, refining, testing some more.
  • Weeks 9-10: Document findings and further questions.
Outcome

This project team will develop concepts for new social networks, applications, or design patterns which empower "everyday users" to do what they want with the people they want, with as much protection from the business whims of platform owners and from bullies and trolls. Promising concepts may go on for further development in future Knight Lab Studio quarters.

Links
Students

Hannah Cole

Fatima Jalloh

Morgan Manella

Hanin Najjar

Yvna Sousa

Xiuyue Yan

2024 Winter
Niche Social Networking

Description

In the most promising visions of future social media, we would no longer rely on large platforms to serve all of our social media needs. Instead, systems would support us participating in many overlapping online communities, just as most of us do in "the real world." What if this participation went beyond simple back-and-forth, but were better connected to our specific interests? For an example, see Letterboxd, a social platform for film fans. For this project, we'll identify one or two specific topical interests around which we'll design a social media ecosystem that really understands the target community (or communities) and is tuned to help them get the most from their time spent.

Important Questions
  • What are some interests which naturally lend themselves to social conversations and knowledge sharing, offline and online? What are examples of thriving communities organized around these topics?
  • What are the relevant issues of community scale? Do these communities work best as very small groups? Or do they benefit from a large and fluid membership?
  • How do different modes of social media work for these communities' interests? What are the pros and cons of topical forums or more open feed-based content? How do different modes (video, audio, text) play into things?
  • Are there specific structured features which would improve the community experience? Special handling for topics of discussion, like books, movies, teams, recipes, locations?
Sample Milestones
  • Week 1-3: Begin research and background reading. Identify topic areas which interest the team and explore how communities organized around these topics work now. Gather examples of challenges they have or opportunities for making their experience better. Dial in on one or two topics for deeper exploration.
  • Week 4-6: Generate ideas for ways to foster an ideal social media experience for the dialed-in topic(s). Create rough prototypes and storyboards and test them on people.
  • Week 7-10: Iterate and refine ideas. Develop a semi-formal “pitch deck” that describes the concept and its features and why it would be valuable to the target audience.
Links
Students

Alessandra Mariano

Brooke Walker

Ella Kuffour

Isabela Lisco

Yong-yu Huang

2024 Spring
Niche Social Networking: Going Deeper

Description

Students on this project will continue explorations begun by a team in the Winter '24 Studio. That team identified an opportunity to imagine social media systems serving people interested in food and drink. In the Spring '24 Studio, a new team will carry on with that exploration, doing more user research, ideation, and prototyping.

Important Questions
  • Who do people want to connect with about their passions? How does scale affect their participation and sense of belonging? What are the differences between a topically focused but otherwise unbounded system (like Letterboxd is for film) and more tightly-focused communities, bound by pre-existing friendships or geographic proximity?
  • What are some specific problems, or "jobs to be done" for people interested in food? Which of those problems benefit in the context of a community of knowledge and experience? How might social media conversations bridge with other actions, such as getting directions, organizing events or trips, or making orders or reservations?
  • How might emerging models for decentralized social media (Mastodon/ActivityPub, BlueSky/ATProtocol, etc) be adapted to or integrated with newly imagined services such as the ones we're considering?
Sample Milestones
  • Week 1-3: Begin research and background reading. Get familiar with the previous team's research as well as broader material on changes in social media. Look at existing online content sources and communities organized around food and drink. Conduct interviews.
  • Week 3-6: Articulate insights into needs and jobs to be done. Generate many possible concepts which could be explored.
  • Week 7-10: Refine ideas. Develop paper or technical prototypes and test them with interested prospective users.
Links
Students

Martin Kong

Samantha Stevens

Jiah Choe

Bella Guerra

Paige Edelheit

2025 Winter
Bring Your Own Algorithm

Description

People frequently complain about the algorithm, a mysterious force governing what shows up in their social media feeds. All of the major commercial social media systems offer some variation on a "for you" feed, designed to keep you on the app and to prime you to watch and react to advertising that shows up there. Whatever problems exist with "For You," there are also challenges with the traditional "reverse chronological" feed (itself an algorithm), especially when some people you follow are extremely chatty and others only post rarely.

Now, there's an alternative. In fact, there are infinite alternatives. New social media service BlueSky is designed to allow anyone to implement their own feed algorithms (and moderation solutions and other building blocks that have traditionally been controlled by the social network provider.)

For this Knight Lab Studio project, the team will learn how to create custom feeds and explore what's possible and what's useful. And maybe we'll get into some of the other opportunities BlueSky's model offers.

NOTE: This is a technical project. Applicants should describe their coding experience in the application.

Important Questions
  • What are some examples of custom feeds which have already been created for BlueSky?
  • What are other interesting ideas for feeds?
  • Are there ways to serve the goals of journalists and their audiences with specific kinds of feeds?
  • Are there user experience (UX) issues with feeds? Does BlueSky's open architecture enable us to imagine better UX?
  • How do feeds relate to the other "composable" aspects of BlueSky's architecture. Is there anything else we should try?
Sample Milestones
  • Week 1-3: Create BlueSky accounts, if necessary. Begin using the service, and finding existing custom feeds. Research how people feel about various social media feeds and what might make them better. Make simple list-based feeds.
  • Week 4-6: Generate ideas for more complex, content-based feeds. Build initial implementations and test.
  • Week 7-10: Follow-up on promising test results, or work through roadblocks. Consider how other components of BlueSky's architecture could be put to interesting uses, journalistic and other.
Links

2025 Spring
Designing New Approaches to Social Media

Description

Social media is at a crisis point. Creators and audiences connect through platforms over which they have little power. Both sides feel like they are at the mercy of algorithms and design decisions which put their interests last. New systems (protocols) like ActivityPub (Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc) and ATProtocol (BlueSky) offer the potential to change that, in much the way that the World Wide Web disrupted the monopoly power of online services like AOL and Compuserve. But, these systems are only raw materials, which need to be actively shaped to get to new solutions.

Important Questions
  • How "social" should social media be? Is it for peer-to-peer conversation? Or a tool for publishers and creators to reach their audiences more efficiently? Can one system serve both, or are the best solutions tuned towards one or the other?
  • What are the building blocks of social media protocols? What do they make possible? How can we assemble those to serve freedom and choice without getting overwhelmed?
  • Why do we even have algorithms in our social media feed? Can we do without them? If not, how can we develop systems that don't leave us at the whims of third-party platforms?
Sample Milestones
  • Week 1-3: Dive in! Gather insights on how current platforms fall short, both by interviews and by understanding the new protocols and the motivations behind them.
  • Week 4-8: Design exploration: Generate concepts for tools and services that make social media work better for audiences and publishers. Prototype and seek feedback on the ideas through multiple iterations.
  • Week 8-10: Testing and refinement: Continue to test prototypes with target users, gather feedback, and iterate on the designs. Document findings and recommendations for future development.
Outcome

This quarter, we'll get an understanding of the building blocks that these new protocols provide and generate a lot of ideas for solutions which could better serve audiences and creators. We'll test these ideas with the people we think might want them, and iterate on them as we refine our understanding, finishing with a catalog of possibilities that Knight Lab or others might take further.

Links

2025 Fall
Designing New Approaches to Social Media

Description

The social media crisis continues. Our feeds are full of drama, ads, and AI slop. But we also rely on feeds to keep us informed about the world, to connect with friends and family, and to find new ideas. Why can't we have more control over the content of our feeds? Emerging technologies like ATProtocol (BlueSky) and ActivityPub (Mastodon, PixelFed, etc) could make that a reality. It won't be as simple as creating clones of what has come before. We need to understand what is possible and what is desirable, and then design new systems that put the power in the hands of users, not platform owners.

Important Questions
  • How "social" should social media be? Is it for peer-to-peer conversation? Or a tool for publishers and creators to reach their audiences more efficiently? Can one system serve both, or are the best solutions tuned towards one or the other?
  • What are the building blocks of social media protocols? What do they make possible? How can we assemble those to serve freedom and choice without getting overwhelmed?
  • Why do we even have algorithms in our social media feed? Can we do without them? If not, how can we develop systems that don't leave us at the whims of third-party platforms?
Sample Milestones
  • Week 1-3: Dive in! Gather insights on how current platforms fall short, both by interviews and by understanding the new protocols and the motivations behind them.
  • Week 4-8: Design exploration: Generate concepts for tools and services that make social media work better for audiences and publishers. Prototype and seek feedback on the ideas through multiple iterations.
  • Week 8-10: Testing and refinement: Continue to test prototypes with target users, gather feedback, and iterate on the designs. Document findings and recommendations for future development.
Outcome

As with the previous iteration, we'll use this quarter to bring a new group of students up to speed on the problems and possibilities of social media, in the interest of generating a lot of ideas for ways things could be better. We may take some inspiration from the previous quarter's work, or we may go in new different directions. In any case, we'll continue to pressure-test our ideas for feasibility and desirability, distilling them into concepts that Knight Lab or others might take further.

Links